Get your customers to give you their email addresses

Whether you’re regularly sending campaigns to tens of thousands of people, are just starting to build a list so you feel ready to start, or sit somewhere in between, the fundamentals are the same:

You’re spending time and effort creating good content.

When you share good content you have an impact on the people who see it.

Email is the best tool for converting sentiment into sales. Email me for stats!

Even if you’re just starting out, you probably have some of your customers’ email addresses. Without making this an advert for Postie, let’s chat about time spent on this stuff. The average time to edit a Postie campaign is 12 minutes, so it’s perfect for even the smallest of databases. It’s a lot easier to justify spending 12 minutes on creating a campaign (versus up to 5 hours on mailchimp or campaign monitor) for even just 20 or 30 people. These people are also probably some of your best or earliest customers, so it’s time to look after them!

Now assuming the goal is a BIGGER list of qualified customers, let’s go get their email addresses!

Any interaction with a potential qualified customer is an opportunity to build your list. Here are six that we think you should take a look at:

When You’re Making Sales Online

Customers are the best potential customers! You absolutely want them to opt in to receive emails from you in the future. Look at the way your current system asks this question, and see if you’re happy with it and/or if you can customise it in any way.

We think we’d be much more likely to opt in to something that says:

We’d love to send you emails that show what we’ve been up to, please opt in if you’re happy to receive them (you can unsubscribe at any time!)

than:

Opt in to receive email marketing material from [brand name].

Through Your Social Channels

Your social audiences are a great group to get to sign up to get your emails. They already like your content, and now with Postie you get to show them ALL of your best content.

To do this, use the sign-up link on the subscriber tab of your dashboard and share it everywhere. Drop it into your Instagram bio and share a post telling people to sign up. You don’t need to leave it up forever, but feel free to post about it every week or so and make sure the sign-up link is there when you need it.

Don’t forget to also share that same link through Facebook posts, on LinkedIn and anywhere else you can!

Website Traffic

Anyone who comes to your website to see what you do should absolutely be invited to join your list. Shopify, Wix, Squarespace, BigCommerce and any website platform will have built-in tools that you can use to manage this, and there are lots of other apps that you can integrate into your site.

It is down to your own personal preference whether you use a pop-up, exit intent pop-up or a simple text field in the footer of your website.

When You See Your Customers Face-to-Face

Don’t miss the opportunity to sign people up face-to-face; in-store, at a market or at an event you’re at, really anywhere you see them.

Clipboards work well, just ask for names and email addresses, and don’t forget the pen. Postie campaigns are not the annoying type of email, so why not put something at the top of the page that says ‘sign up to get the best of our Instagram content in your inbox every week or fortnight’? That’s the kind of list we’d sign up to!

Social Media Giveaways/Competitions

When I ran a digital marketing agency, the brands that we represented all wanted to build their email lists. The number one way we did this was via competitions on Facebook. Generally these were through relatively complicated microsites but the principles were always the same, getting people to enter and sign up to the mailing list.

You can get great results by running a simple competition asking people to give you a 25-words-or-less answer and capturing everything through a google form or typeform.

Sharing Via Current Customers

What better way to build a list of good potential customers than to sit back and ask your current customers to help? Through the main body copy in your email, ask your customers to share your campaign. Include a link to sign up right at the top of your email and get more people who look and shop like your best customers.

Good luck! I’d love to hear if you have any questions, successes or challenges.

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